My police state propaganda poster page and my market anarchy picture page were big on Stumble for a while. As far as I can tell, a very small percentage of Stumblers clicked any of the links to look at my other pages. But it’s a start. If they’re going to browse the web that way at least there’s some good subversive reading for them.

Marketing 101 suggests that the hook is good, but you’re losing them somewhere along the way.

Perhaps your writing includes assumptions that they don’t share? Perhaps if you elaborated (or maybe just clarified) a bit on certain sections, it would have a greater impact? Perhaps it would encourage comments if you made it seem like it was a recent post?

If that is your best hook, I would invest the time to analyze, experiment and learn about how you can make it more effective.

You may also want to consider tailoring that particular page (or your whole site) so that it recognizes first-time visitors and greets them accordingly. Then you can point them to any background material that might help them better understand your work.

Take it from someone who does this for a living. Stumbleupon is a one trick pony. Digg is a lot like that too. People visit the social links for the specific content, not to check out a new site in particular.

My theory on this, is that you need to repeatedly come up on Reddit, Digg, Stumble etc so that people are visiting your site at different points regularly, in order to sell them that “you have good stuff”.

Stumbleupon also promotes (or at least makes it incredibly easy) to continue stumbling. A person may have been brought to your site, which counts as a visitor, but immediately hit the stumble button again.

I didn’t come from Stumbleupon, I came from reddit. I haven’t left, either. ??

Mike, thank you, first of all, for doing what you are doing. Don’t get discouraged. I’m an anarchist too, trying to grow my own food and attain self sufficiency. (This is the first season I’m planting.) I deeply admire your commitment. Slowly, very very slowly, the odds will eventually turn in our favor.